Demonstrators celebrate atop an army tank in Tahrir square during protests in Cairo. Photograph: Yannis Behrakis/Reuters

It's too early to say that Barack Obama has mishandled the Egypt crisis. But so far at least, his administration has not covered itself in glory. In under a week, Hillary Clinton went from describing Hosni Mubarak's regime as "stable" to demanding an "orderly transition" to democracy.

The truth, as many American commentators tell it, is that Obama is stuck in an "impossible hole", caught between the need for reform and security imperatives. Sensing his hesitation, gratuitous and contradictory advice has been pouring in from all sides. But on one point mostly all agree: Hosni Mubarak is finished.

Foreign policy veteran Leslie Gelb urged Obama to take a "realist" approach. "Let's stop prancing about and proclaiming our devotion to peace, 'universal rights', and people power," he wrote. The US must act swiftly to protect its political, economic and security interests.

Mubarak was the "devil we know". Chief among the devils we did not know was Egypt's Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. "Baloney and wishful thinking aside, the MB would be calamitous for US security ... If they gain control, it's going to be almost impossible for the people to take it back. Just look at Iran," Gelb argued.

Obama should keep quiet in public while privately trying to persuade Mubarak to begin a gradual transition, culminating in UN-supervised elections in 12 months' time, Gelb added. Defenestrating Egypt's wounded pharaoh now would only convince other regional allies that the US could not be trusted.

Peter Beinart, also blogging in the Daily Beast, took an opposing view. The Egyptian protests, like leaked Israeli-Palestine peace negotiations documents, were evidence that "the Middle East is spinning out of America's control". He continued: "It's time for Obama to choose ... It's time to stop insulating Mubarak and [Palestinian president] Mahmoud Abbas from a reckoning with their own people."

Beinart added there were potential advantages in the current situation. "Osama bin Laden has never looked more irrelevant than he does this week as tens of thousands march across the Middle East not for jihad but for democracy, electricity and a decent job."

Elliott Abrams, deputy national security adviser to George Bush, told Washington Post readers that the Egyptian and Tunisian revolts were "exploding, once and for all, the myth of Arab exceptionalism" – meaning the erroneous idea that, somehow, Arabs were "beyond the reach of liberty".

Regime change was desirable, Abrams agreed, but how to achieve it? "Every day Mubarak survives in power now, he does so as a dictator propped up by brute force alone. Election of his son Gamal as his successor is already a sour joke ... [but] the three decades Mubarak and his cronies have already had in power leave Egypt with no reliable mechanisms for a transition to democratic rule."

Abrams lambasted Obama for abandoning Bush's freedom agenda, calling it "nothing short of a tragedy". Obama's attempts at quiet persuasion had failed to advance reform in Syria, Iran and Egypt (and Russia). "This has been the greatest failure of policy and imagination in the administration's approach," he said.

Newsweek carried an insider assessment of the White House's performance. It described how Obama advisers expected Mubarak to resign when he spoke on television on Friday night. Instead, he was defiant. "As Mubarak ended his address, someone in the [White House situation] room voiced the thought on everyone's mind: 'Well, what do we do now?'", it reported.

Time magazine concluded that, whoever was responsible for past policy failures, Mubarak's usefulness now was at an end. "Even if he tried to fight his way out of the crisis, the autocrat's ability to serve as a bastion of stability will have been fatally compromised," it said.

Columnist Anne Applebaum offered cheerful reassurance for Obama. Some things were simply beyond US control and options were limited. "But there are a few and we should exercise them immediately," she said. "We should speak directly to the Egyptian public, not only to its leaders. We should congratulate Egyptians for having the courage to take to the streets. We should smile and embrace instability. And we should rejoice – because change in repressive societies is good."